War-time British Prime Minister Winston Churchill rated women’s attractiveness out of 1,000, told his mother-in-law how much he liked having sex with her daughter and was definitely not gay, according to a new book.

Historian Sonia Purnell
focuses on Clementine Churchill, Winston’s wife of 57 years, but
also delves into his love life.

Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival on Thursday,
Purnell said Churchill pursued romance with “gusto,” but
unlike other world leaders of history was not a “sexual
predator.”

While writing ‘First Lady: the Life and Wars of Clementine
Churchill’, Purnell said she had discovered how, at
high-society balls, Winston and his regular wingman Eddie Marsh
would rate women’s beauty according to a scale devised from the
myth of Helen of Troy, assessing them according to how many ships
their faces would launch.

A real beauty, in Churchill’s eyes, would launch 1,000 vessels,
while woman held to be unappealing might only launch “a small
gun boat at most.”

However, one woman who spent the night with him reported the
young Winston was somewhat more mouth than trousers, saying:
“Winston had done nothing but talk into the small hours on
the subject of himself.”

In the run-up to his marriage to Clementine, Churchill consulted
a slightly unusual source.